It’s sometimes hard to take a story that is so shocking and make it more interesting. More exciting. More absurd.

I tried. I’ve been working on this post all evening. But nope. I just can’t top the lunacy of the real thing.

Here is the stupidest story of the day (in my humble opinion):

HALFWAY (Oregon) — Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into the Pine Eagle Charter School in this tiny rural community on Friday. Students were at home for an in-service day, so the gunmen headed into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire.

Shocking, no?

Terrible. But read on.

Someone figured out in a few seconds that the bullets were not drawing blood because they were blanks and the exercise was a drill, designed to test Pine Eagle’s preparation for an assault by “active shooters” who were, in reality, members of the school staff. But those few seconds left everybody plenty scared.

Now when you go to work, look around and figure out who on the staff would take a job like that.

“Hey, Joe! You know how those other teachers are actually liked by the students? Wanna make them shit their pants? That’ll stop them from laughing at you.

But think about this.

Instead of trying to limit guns, ammunition, access to lethal weapons, this community hired staff members to pretend to shoot their colleagues to see whether the teachers would react properly should the guns that haven’t been taken away from fucking lunatics should be used in a school shooting.

If I can be thankful of one thing, it’s that i got out of the work world before all the gun nuts started dropping from the trees. And that’s a good thing, because several people had me tagged as the kind of loon to come in with guns. One actually accused me of it (in a semi-joking way), and I shut him up with a detailed description of how I’d blow the building up. After hours, of course, because I liked most of my co-workers back then. Not that I WOULD have…. probably….. 😉
(Sorry, just kidding. Having a bad headache day, and that seriously warps my sense of humour. Yes, more so than usual. 😀 )

John, I do hope you keep clear of airports and government buildings when you say crazy things like that. Because I want to be reading your blog, not blogs about that crazy John Erickson who got arrested for threatening to blow something up. I know you’re kidding and you know you’re kidding. The FBI doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, though.

Your last paragraph expresses the thought I always have after one of these insane mass shootings: How much worse it would have been if more of those people had been armed. You have fear, panic, and chaos — and you want more bullets flying? That can’t be the answer. As for that school drill, it’s just another delusion. How do you prepare for something that’s completely irrational and unpredictable? And what if the Bad Guy with the gun turns out to be one of the teachers who’s been through the training and already knows what everyone is going to do?

@What is wrong with some people in this country?..>I wonder that more & more & more as I read or hear of things happening in our country. Its beyond worrisome actually. It makes me wonder, seriously, how things got this skewed/this off track/this out of control..Where the so called NORM is changing so rapidly that I wonder who is this shyt! normal to? And WHY in the name of GOD is the majority accepting this type of insanity as the norm?

Yep the trickle down effect of the dumb down descent is moving faster & faster…I’d laugh(cause I love laughing) but its really tragic more than funny..I could go on & on about this topic & really break it alllll the way down; and more than likely will soon as time permits. Truly dig your insight and for making people THINK

There is actual research showing that people with a gun in their house, loaded and ready, still are usually not able to get the gun in time to stop an intruder and defend themselves. It’s much more likely they are to shoot their own spouse or child coming in unexpectedly. Sigh.

Holy shit! Sorry…just no other way to put it. That is beyond stupid. Actually, something similar happened in a town in my state a couple years back, only it was labeled a “training” for convenience store workers. I think the employees sued. Why wouldn’t they? Therapy bills for life don’t pay themselves.

Those workers are smarter than the ones in the Oregon school system, who, at least according to this article, seemed more or less OK with the test. Perhaps they were shooting blanks from their brains while others were shooting blanks into them.

I was out to dinner with a group of teachers on Friday and we ran into the local sheriff and I related this story. They all looked at me dumbfounded – they thought I made it up. To think what would have happened if just one person had a concealed weapon on them, or had a heart attack, or ran at the guys with a pocket knife, or….or….

that is absolutely hideous…..hard to believe someone would ever do that….thanks for bringing this to our attention, I would have had no idea there were idiots making decisions like this. A scare like that could harm those teachers for a lot longer mentally, than just the day of the drill….

If you read the article, the teachers weren’t particularly upset by it. Me? I’d be livid. I’d be suing. I would be making sure that the people who organized and participated (from the shooter’s end) were prosecuted.

The strange thing, Stare, is that the article quoted a couple of them and they didn’t sound like they needed it — not from this, anyway. they seemed cool with it, like it was a test they didn’t do very well on, not a test of one’s ability to withstand an armed assault. That was possibly as surprising as the idiots who decided to do such a test.

Gun fanatics keep making the case that we should restrict guns. I don’t want guns in the hands of people who make such remarkably stupid decisions like the ones in these news stories. I want my government to protect me from them. When will this lunacy be curbed? I sure hope President Obama doesn’t give up on revamping our gun laws.

Here’s yet another stupid idea. North Carolina is now considering a bill that would allow people with concealed carry permits to bring guns into places that serve liquor AND onto campuses at public universities under the frequently cited yet insane theory that more guns make us all safer. What the f***??

Yes, the same thing at our university – it hasn’t passed yet but it probably will. What I didn’t realize was that people were already allowed to bring certain weapons on campus anyway – concealed or not. I just – shake my head.

We had an active shooter drill. They (trained police officers) held it in one building and those who wished to participate could do so. We also watched a film. The film was useful – for instance it pointed out that guns don’t sound like BANG in the movies but sometimes like popping. People don’t recognize it and don’t take cover. Like the bit where the airline people tell you what to do in the event of a crash, sometimes knowing some strategies can help save you. Maybe. Of course this was a planned drill and people knew what was going on and could choose to participate. Having it sprung on you teaches nothing but fear.

Of course the cop who spoke to us said they automatically assume that anyone with a gun is the suspect. It’s their job. So I asked “well, what if the people on campus have guns? He looked uncomfy and said he couldn’t answer that. Right.

I don’t know where you are, but guns are allowed just about everywhere here in Virginia — home of course of VA Tech. It doesn’t give me the slightest feeling of safety. If I had wanted to live in Dodge, I would have.

But you’re right there is a difference between an orderly, instructive drill and scaring the shit out of folks.

I’m from Texas, where pickup trucks with gun racks are the norm. Sigh. You’d think people would figure out that the guns are a bad thing – but their response is just to have more guns in the hands of the “good guys”. Umm, yes. That should do it. They say well we won’t take away knifes. Well, no, because you can use a knife to cut your food. What else can you use a gun for besides killing? Waiting . . .

I went through training like this when I worked at a bank, but I as working in a profession with a high risk of robbery, so this training was necessary to help us save our lives, as well as our co-workers, & at the same time try to identify the robber. No one ever suggested we should carry guns, so we would be better prepared to defend ourselves! We never considered it either! AND the mock robbery was put on by the trained professionals of the local police department.

I read the full article, and there isn’t even the slightest bit of “ARE THEY INSANE???” tone in it. It’s like they are talking about a fire drill.
Oh yes, geniuses, keep doing those drills. You will get shot with real bullets eventually, because your whole crime prevention strategy relies on having a guy (or guys) with loaded guns, who will shoot first and ask questions later.

I think this is a case for the good guy lawyers. If I had been put in that position (especially if I poo’d my pants in fear), well, I would sue. I’m really not a big proponent of law suits but sometime they serve as a great deterrent or improver of behavior.

That’s funny you mention that story. I was watching Vice with my boyfriend a week or so ago and they covered a story on a Christian school (I believe it was a Baptist school) in Texas that has an ex-cop as the preacher. He has taken it upon himself to teach his students how to fight off a shooter. They showed a drill on the show in which the children were all in the sanctuary and men with fake guns ran in and the kids had to crawl under the pews. It was hard to believe that the children were so calm. I would have been scared to death at their age. But needless to say, its such a shame that that is what it kind of boils down to now in today’s society. You can’t even feel safe going to the movies or to school. It’s ridiculous.

That makes me sick. Now, those people will always and forever have the fear not in the back, but in the front of their minds, that they could be gunned down at any moment at work. Imagine if local cops randomly did something like that at local grocery stores. Puleeze!!! And with kids being as sensitive as they are (especially mine), they pick up on fear. So wrong on so many levels.

That’s how I felt, too. I couldn’t make it into anything more. Not possible.

And isn’t that the most absurd point of all. That the participants are sitting there saying “yeah, I would have been shot.” I’m glad no one got hurt, too, but they might have — heart attacks for example.

The folks who thought this one up should go into the stocks in the public square.

Sure, maybe someone has a heart attack, someone else sprains an ankle trying to escape, one of the fake-shooters gets shot — but it’s all worth it, because everyone learned a valuable lesson: being shot at is scary.

Oh, dear God, no!!!!!
I can’t even imagine the answer to your last question:
“what if there was “A Good Guy” with a gun in that faculty meeting?”
Why the hell is there no answer to that question, ever?

I was thinking about you the whole time I wrote this up (and I tried to make it pithy but gave up). You should print this article out and let the folks in your school district know that this is, ummm, not a good idea. Personally, if I were one of the teachers in that staff meeting, I’d be getting a lawyer and suing the shit out of the people who thunk this hair brained scheme up.

I can’t believe they’d do that. How scary for those teachers not in the know. At the very least, they should have been told drills like that may take place in the future, but even then, the scare could cause lasting harm.

I remind myself that there are many, many responsible gun owners, but then stories like these occur (far too frequently), and I just feel sick. How many kids have to be accidentally shot before guns are tightly locked up and ammunition stored separately?

Then, frankly there is no point to having a gun for protection. The burglar breaks in and you say “hold on a minute while I unlock my gun and then go get the ammo.” So, it truth, there is no reason to have a gun. Hunting, OK. Not my bag, but OK. Home invasion — it’s not gonna help. Get a dog.